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Virginia Tech researchers receive $2.9 million grant with China to study infectious diseases

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Header image: College of Science researchers Kate Langwig (left) and Joseph Hoyt (right) received a grant to understand the long-term host and pathogen dynamics of white-nose syndrome in bats.

VT NEWS | August 14, 2019

Sometimes, scientists have to look to the past to better understand the present.

Researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science received a $2.9 million dollar award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to understand the long-term host and pathogen dynamics of white-nose syndrome in bats. If all goes according to plan, their research will provide implications for other diseases as well.

Kate Langwig, an assistant professor, and Joseph Hoyt, a research scientist, are combining their respective specialties in infectious disease ecology with a focus on past and present disease patterns to find out how some hosts and pathogens can coexist, particularly after a host has already seen a massive decline from disease.

Langwig and Hoyt are collaborating with Chinese researchers to examine how the pathogen that is responsible for white-nose syndrome has affected bats across both time and space, and whether there are similar or different mechanisms that bats use to survive with this deadly disease.

White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that spreads in the winter and causes lesions in the wings of bats during hibernation, setting off a cascade of physiological consequences that eventually lead to death. Since 2005, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has killed millions of bats, causing bat population declines of 70 to 100 percent across multiple bat species in eastern North America.

However, researchers have noticed that, of the few remaining populations, some bats are less affected by the devastation, and they want to know why.

“Some of the major questions that we are trying to understand are ‘Is it the bats that are special? Or is it the environment that they inhabit? Or is it some combination of the two?’ If it is the bats that are special, it means that you could take individuals from these surviving populations and repopulate areas like Virginia, which has been really hard hit by white-nose syndrome,” said Langwig, who is also an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center.

Hoyt’s previous research has provided evidence that the fungus likely emerged in Eastern Asia tens of thousands of years ago and then spread to Europe thousands of years ago. It was likely introduced to northeastern North America in 2005.

Rhinolophus ferrumequinum bat population in China

One of the novel components of their research is that they are focusing on bat populations in Eurasia, which have survived with white-nose syndrome for millennia, to make their predictions about coexistence and the survival of bat populations.

“We are not just looking in areas where the disease has already caused impacts in North America and trying to understand the process of coexistence in our bat populations here, but we are actually trying to look at an area where that coexistence has already been reached – in Europe and Asia,” said Hoyt. “Can we draw some inference from these long-term dynamics to understand what our bat populations will look like in the future?”

In order to fine-tune their predictions about the future of white-nose syndrome afflicted bats, Langwig is building a mathematical integral projection model, a hybrid between an individually based model and a population model, which will allow researchers to make better predictions about disease dynamics.

She hopes that her modeling framework, combined with the experimental, observational, and genomic components of the project, can be applied to understand how hosts and pathogens are coexisting in other disease systems.

Both Langwig and Hoyt say that a large component of the grant is to identify the long-term effects of this disease on different bat populations, and if what we are seeing now in North America are actually long-term or short-term adaptations that will change in the future.

“If we see that this fungus is impacting populations in Eurasia, then it’s probably something that North American bats are going to face for a long time,” said Langwig.

This grant is an example of history in the making. This grant was the first time that this joint NSF, NIH, and USDA program has collaborated with NSFC.

In addition to Hoyt and Langwig, who are both affiliated faculty members of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, the co-principal investigators of this project include Jiang Feng and Keping Sun from Northeast Normal University in China, Jeff Foster from Northern Arizona University, and Beth Shapiro and A. Marm Kilpatrick from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Langwig and Hoyt were hired as part of the Global Systems Science Destination Area in the College of Science at Virginia Tech to address issues of infectious disease. The Global Systems Science Destination Area is focused on understanding and finding solutions to critical problems associated with human activity and environmental change that together affect diseases states, water quality, and food production.

~ Written by Kendall Daniels

Related Article: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2019/06/062419-FLSI-bats-white-nose-syndrome.html

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Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Disease New Publications Research Sustainable Agriculture

Researchers publish new study on citrus greening disease

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From VT News | July 11, 2019

Orange juice is a staple on many breakfast tables, but the future availability of citrus products is threatened by the global spread of huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening disease.

Knowing which environmental conditions are suitable for disease transmission and where those conditions occur is vital for crop management. A new study published by researchers at Virginia Tech with a team of international researchers in Journal of Applied Ecology investigates the thermal suitability for transmission of citrus greening with implications for surveillance and prevention.

The bacterium responsible for causing citrus greening prevents the formation of commercially viable fruit and is transmitted by an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid.

Both the pathogen and the insect vector have been spreading in recent years, devastating regions famous for high citrus production and threatening the future of the citrus industry. As citrus greening becomes an increasing threat to growers worldwide, the future of the industry may depend on identifying locations that do not have a high risk of production collapse.

Led by Rachel Taylor of the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) in the United Kingdom, the team of researchers behind the study created a mathematical model to calculate how suitability for citrus greening transmission depends on temperature and mapped how this translates into areas where the disease could become established.

“Our suitability maps can be used to underpin risk-based surveillance and prevention to ensure resources to fight citrus greening are applied in the best locations,” Taylor said.

Disease transmission dynamics are largely dependent on temperature, both for successful replication of the HLB bacterium and survival of psyllid vectors. The model was built with data collected under laboratory conditions, directly incorporating the effects and limitations of environmental temperature into the estimate of suitability.

“Although the approach is fairly simple, we’ve shown in other systems that we can make surprisingly accurate predictions,” said coauthor Leah Johnson, assistant professor in Department of Statistics in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.

The model predicts that successful infection of host plants can occur between 16˚C and 33˚C, with peak transmission at around 25˚C. Using this information of the temperature limits for disease spread, the authors were able to make maps of global suitability, showing how many months of the year have temperature conditions that would place citrus groves at risk for infection with HLB. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many regions with nearly year-round suitability for citrus greening include some of the citrus-growing areas hit hardest by the disease, including Brazil and South-East Asia.

This work provides critical information for citrus production and crop management moving into the future. “Translating these models into maps helps communicate our findings to citrus stakeholders and creates a baseline for thinking about potential climate change impacts,” said coauthor Sadie Ryan, from the University of Florida.

Some locations identified by the model as suitable for transmission for half of the year, such as California and the Iberian Peninsula, are currently free of citrus greening. In these areas known for high citrus production, preventing the establishment of the disease vector through increased surveillance and management may help prevent the devastating effects that citrus greening has had on other growers.

“We hope that this model can be a useful planning tool for growers and policymakers dealing with HLB,” said Johnson, who is also an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center, an arm of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute at Virginia Tech.

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CONTACT:

Kristin Rose

(540) 231-6614

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Disease New Publications News Research

Researchers find that probiotic bacteria reduces the impact of white-nose syndrome in bats

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From VT News | June 26, 2019

Header image: A little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) covered in the fungus, P. destructans, which causes white-nose syndrome. Photo credit Joseph Hoyt.

It is widely accepted that probiotic bacteria are beneficial to human health, but what if they could also be used to reduce wildlife disease and conserve biodiversity?

Researchers from Virginia Tech and UC Santa Cruz did just that in a field trial on the effect of probiotic bacteria on white-nose syndrome in bat populations. They found that it reduces the impact of the disease about five-fold.

These findings were published recently in Scientific Reports.

Bats are dominant night-time insect predators that can greatly benefit agriculture, but their populations are being decimated by the fungal disease called white-nose syndrome.

White-nose syndrome has destroyed bat populations across Eastern North America, and it shows no signs of stopping as it spreads westward.

“Our results suggest that the probiotic bacteria, Pseudomonas fluorescens, is a useful tool for reducing white-nose syndrome impacts on bat populations, particularly if combined with other management tools,” said Joseph Hoyt, a research scientist in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science.

“With the severity of white-nose syndrome declines and facing the potential extinction of some species, it’s essential that we consider out-of-the-box solutions to reducing population impacts. Given the notorious difficulty of treating fungal infections in mammals, probiotics are a sensible solution for reducing fungal burdens of animals,” said Kate Langwig, the second author of this paper and an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science and an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center.

White-nose syndrome is a disease that spreads in the winter and causes bats to leave their roosts during hibernation. The fungus, which kills the bats over several months, depletes the bats’ fat stores, forcing them to expend even more energy on finding food that isn’t available during the harsh winter. Eventually, most bats die of starvation or exposure to the cold.

Researchers are seeing declines that are rendering some bat species functionally extinct. Specifically, the little brown bat, Northern long-eared bat, Indiana bat, and the tri-colored bat populations have declined by 70 to 99 percent across 44 states since 2006.

“Little brown bats were not an uncommon species prior to the emergence of this disease. It would be like losing robins from the bird community. These are abundant backyard species that you would see at nighttime that have essentially been removed,” Hoyt said.

One species, the Northern long-eared bat, has been extirpated from most of its range by white-nose syndrome. “As far as mainland populations go, if we see a single bat all winter – that’s a lot,” Hoyt said. “At this point, it may be too late for that species in terms of trying save it. I think its demise happened so quickly that it was not something that anyone could respond to fast enough.”

Populations of little brown bats, Northern long-eared bats, tri-colored bats, and the big brown bats were sampled for the bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens to make sure similar bacteria were naturally present before introducing a higher dosage in the experimental treatment.

In an abandoned mine in Wisconsin, Hoyt and his research team tested the efficacy of P. fluorescens in two simultaneous experiments with caged and free-flying little brown bats. All the bats were tagged with a passive integrated transponder (PIT), which allowed researchers to identify and keep track of when individual bats emerged from the mine.

The purpose of doing the free-flying experiment was to conduct a natural field trial, where bats can move freely and interact with the environment the way that they normally would. Researchers found that measuring the amount of pathogen associated with each bat helped them to better predict the bat’s survival time. Interestingly, researchers also saw that treatment with P. fluorescens lengthened the amount of time that bats stayed in the mine.

“Our treatment delayed emergence time, which would put more bats emerging during spring-time when there are insects available for them to eat, allowing them to recover from the disease,” Hoyt said.

The caged experiment was meant to counteract the uncertainty of the free-flying experiment by keeping them in a controlled area, while providing researchers key information about how or why they died. However, Hoyt said that, in general, bats are challenging to work with.

“In our caged experiment, there were some individuals that got really sick and likely influenced, or biased, our survival estimates for other individuals.” In the end, the researchers found that the amount of fat that a bat had was the only important factor in predicting their survival in the cage trial, not how infected they were.

In the free-flying experiment, their controls had only 10 percent survivability while their treatment group had 50 percent. Hoyt and his team are thinking of ways that the probiotic treatment can be developed to further increase survival. Currently, researchers are testing to see if pairing probiotics with other forms of treatment can increase survival even more.

This is one of the first published papers that show that a probiotic can reduce the impact of pathogens on wildlife. “It’s some potential hope that with the right organism and by tinkering around with different techniques, we can start to develop things similar to what has been done with humans,” Hoyt said.

As far as what you can do to help the bats, there are many ways to be “bat-friendly.” For instance, there are guidelines that you can follow that will help reduce the impact that we have on bats. Putting up bat-boxes, protecting waterways, and changing landscaping to provide insects for bats are good places to start.

In addition to Hoyt and Langwig, who are both affiliated faculty members of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, the coauthors of the paper include Paul White, Heather Kaarakka, and Jennifer Redell at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Winifred Frick at Bat Conservation International and UC Santa Cruz; Katy Parise and Jeffrey Foster at the University of New Hampshire; and Marm Kilpatrick at UC Santa Cruz.

–Written by Kendall Daniels

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CONTACT:

Kristin Rose

(540) 231-6614

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Conservation Disease Invasive Species News Research

Virginia Tech team working to preserve the treasure of Hawaii’s forests

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From VT News

May 7, 2019
 
 

A shoot of green rises on an expanse of recently cooled lava on Hawaii’s Big Island, the first evidence of seeds that have slipped through cracks and fissures to take advantage of moisture trapped in the new earth. The shoot will start as a shrub and then rise as a tree, producing brilliant flowers ranging in color from red to yellow. The flowers have adapted to close their stomata when toxic volcanic gases blow through, a plant version of holding one’s breath until the air clears.

This flowering evergreen, the ʻōhiʻa tree (Metrosideros polymorpha), is one of the most versatile and widespread plants in Hawaii, crucial to both the ecology and cultural history of the Pacific island chain. Today the ʻōhiʻa is under significant threat from two invasive fungal pathogens that can kill an 80-foot flowering giant in a matter of days. The fungus has ravaged forests on the Big Island and was recently discovered on Kauai.

Scientists are now making efforts to contain the outbreak of this devastating pathogen and preserve Hawaii’s wood industry. To aid in that effort, and with the support of the USDA Forest Service, Professor Emeritus Marshall Whiteand research scientist Zhangjing Chen of the College of Natural Resources and Environment are testing a portable method that uses a steam-and-vacuum system to sterilize ʻōhiʻa logs. Their efforts would allow foresters to move fallen trees and harvest logs, potentially slowing the spread the infection, termed Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, while preserving Hawaii’s timber industry.

Using steam heat to save the ozone layer

White and Chen, both of the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials, have been researching steam-and-vacuum processes for killing off insect and fungal invaders in wood materials for the past five years. They have received more than $1.5 million in funding to test and refine the process of treating logs for transport.

“The current approved method in the U.S. for treating logs for import and export is with methyl bromide,” White explained. “The reason we’re trying to develop an alternative is because methyl bromide is a Class I ozone-depleting substance. It’s extremely dangerous and toxic to mammals.”

White and Chen’s process was initially developed to treat pallets and solid wood packaging more efficiently, but they have since expanded it to kill insects and fungi in logs, and even snail infestations in pallet loads of Mediterranean tile.

“The physics of steam and vacuum are fairly ideal for what we’re trying to do with these large pieces of wood,” White explained. “If you tried to treat a log with hot air, you’d dry it and degrade the wood. Steam is an ideal method of transferring energy to surfaces. We use vacuums to create pressure gradients to distribute heat effectively.”

The result is a process that carries less of an environmental burden and is more time efficient: while it takes 72 hours to fumigate an oak log with methyl bromide, the steam-and-vacuum treatment pioneered by White and Chen takes 8 to 12 hours.

The downside, White said, is the cost.

“This equipment is expensive,” White said. “We’re talking about an initial investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars, whereas the initial investment in fumigation is significantly less — you just need tarpaulin and the gas itself, and some other basic pieces of equipment.”

White said that a recent economic analysis of the steam-and-vacuum method returned promising results. The analysis predicted a positive cash flow in the first year, and an annual rate of return of approximately 40% of the cost of equipment.

The goddess of fire

Aside from environmental considerations, the ʻōhiʻa tree plays a significant role in the cultural history of the islands. In Hawaiian mythology the ʻōhiʻa tree is revered as a symbol of young love and, perhaps, as a warning to not cross goddesses with fiery tempers.

“The tale is well-known in Hawaii,” White said. “The fire goddess Pele fell in love with a man named ʻŌhiʻa, but he was in love with a beautiful woman named Lehua. Pele got mad and turned ʻŌhiʻa into a tree. Lehua was distraught, so she went to the other gods and asked them to intervene, and after some deliberation, they decided to make her the flower of the tree.”

“And it’s a beautiful flower,” he added. “It’s just magnificent when the tree is in bloom.”

Native Hawaiians had multiple uses for the ʻōhiʻa tree. The hard, red-brown wood was used in the construction of homes as well as for tools, weapons, and the decking for outrigger canoes. The flowers and leaf buds were used to make leis, and the flower was used by native Hawaiians as a medicinal aid during childbirth. The tree remains a crucial building material.

“ʻŌhiʻa poles are still used in construction today,” White said. “The wood is very prized, not just by the native population for ceremonial structures but by nonindigenous people as well. It’s an extremely durable and beautiful wood.”

Six people — five men and one woman — stand in front of an open truck trailer containing a large metal box.
Mark White, third from left, confers with state and federal officials in Hawaii during a recent test of the steam-and-vacuum process for treating ʻōhiʻa logs for a fungal pathogen. The vacuum chamber, visible in the background, fits inside a 20-foot trailer for easy transport.

By land and sea

To work with this Hawaiian treasure and get their vacuum chamber to Hawaii, White and Chen had to take their project on the road and across the sea, quite literally.

“We put the vacuum chamber inside a 20-foot car trailer,” White explained. “Inside the trailer is a 7.5-horsepower vacuum pump and a 100-kilowatt electric steam boiler to create the steam. We also have various process controls and a data acquisitions system, which lets us monitor the temperatures of the logs externally and internally. All of that is on wheels.”

“Then we drove it across the country and shipped it by boat to Hawaii,” he said.

The fact that the chamber is portable is an added benefit, since it can reach forested areas where Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death has already occurred.

“Hawaii will not allow the movement of ʻōhiʻa logs and lumber right now because the process of removing dead trees spreads the fungus, so that’s a huge issue,” White explained. “You have parts of forest where this fungus exists that cannot be cleared, because you can’t move the logs. Right now, your only option is to burn the trees or bury them.”

Perfecting the process

To destroy the fungus, the logs are placed inside the vacuum chamber. The atmosphere is dropped to 15% air, and then saturated steam is injected into the chamber. White and Chen are testing different combinations of time and temperature to perfect the process for ʻōhiʻa logs.

To determine if the fungus survived the treatment, a team of pathologists from the USDA Forest Service and the University of Hawaii use “carrot baiting,” a method that involves taking a sliver of wood from the treated and untreated logs and putting it between two slices of carrot.

“Typically, we try to cultivate fungi on agar, but that doesn’t work well with these particular fungi,” White explained. “So we’re using carrots to see what will grow.”

The results are excellent: all of the ʻōhiʻa logs heat treated to 56 degrees Celsius using the steam-and-vacuum method have tested negative for the fungus responsible for Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, an important first step in protecting Hawaii’s crucial forest ecology.

“This treatment will allow for the movement and utilization of materials from the ʻōhiʻa tree and a reduction in the dispersal of the fungus.” White said. “That’s the ultimate goal — to reduce the spread of the disease and protect this amazing tree.”

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Krista Timney
540-231-6157

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Accolades Disease News Research

Virginia Tech professor researches vaccine efficacy

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News

March 6, 2019

Cover image: Assistant biological sciences professor Kate Langwig (right) and her undergraduate researcher Mercedes Clark (left) and lab manager Steffany Yamada (middle) review mathematical modeling simulations to assess vaccine efficacy.

 

The recent measles outbreaks across the country emphasize the importance of vaccinations.

“For many infectious diseases, we rely on herd immunity to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infections. Herd immunity is the protection of the ‘herd,’ our population, by preventing infections in the vast majority people,” said Kate Langwig, an infectious disease ecologist at Virginia Tech. “We can calculate the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated to prevent diseases from spreading and maintain herd immunity. For some pathogens, like measles, the number that needs to vaccinated is very high because the measles virus spreads so easily.”

Langwig, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, is researching ways in which vaccine efficacy can be improved.

The measles vaccine has been shown to have 97 percent efficacy, but “understanding the circumstances that contribute to vaccine ineffectiveness can help to better protect populations,” Langwig said.

Langwig and her lab ran mathematical modeling simulations to determine if vaccine efficacy might be lower when individuals are exposed to high pathogen doses, and when individuals vary in their susceptibility.

For example, if you have been vaccinated against the measles, but someone sneezes very close to your face, or you’re caring for a sick kid who is sneezing, coughing, etc., are you more likely to get sick? In addition, if you’re run down (maybe from chasing that kid the week earlier), are you more likely to get infected even if you’ve been vaccinated?

Langwig and her lab found in their simulations that vaccines are predicted to be less effective at higher pathogen doses and when individuals in the population have similar susceptibility. These findingswere recently published in Scientific Reports.

“Susceptibility, meaning how likely an individual is to get infected, is also important. Individuals that are younger or have poor nutrition can be more likely to get infected, even if they have been vaccinated. We found that populations that have more variable susceptibility have higher vaccine efficacy,” said Langwig, an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center, an arm of the Fralin Life Science Institute.

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Langwig and her lab were interested in validating their simulations with some real-world data, so they did a systematic literature review with help from Virginia Tech undergraduate researchers to determine whether there were examples of diseases where vaccines efficacy is reduced at high doses.

“What we found was a bit of a shock – there are a very small number of studies that test whether vaccines are effective across multiple pathogen doses. We reviewed almost 6,000 articles and identified only about a dozen studies that had tested vaccines across multiple pathogen doses. Within those few studies, the pattern was generally consistent with our simulation – vaccine efficacy tended to be lower at high pathogen doses,” said Langwig.

They did find that some vaccines did offer complete protection regardless of pathogen dose in several model organisms, suggesting that not all vaccines are less effective when individuals are exposed to high doses.

Extrapolation to human systems should be done with care, but this research helps increase the understanding of host susceptibility, pathogen dose, and vaccine efficacy.

“One thing that surprised us is that many scientists are vaguely aware that vaccines might fail at high pathogen doses, but there were a very small number of studies that had ever examined this,” said Langwig.

Langwig is currently collaborating with another lab to test vaccine efficacy and different pathogen doses in a species of rainbow trout. They will continue to design mathematical models to test predictions in real-world situations to determine how populations can be further protected.

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Categories
Disease Invasive Species News

Invasive Asian Longhorned Tick Spreading Widely in U.S.

people looking at wood tick embedded in human skin
From CDC.gov
NOVEMBER 29

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with public health, agricultural, and academic experts to understand the possible threat posed by the spread of the Asian longhorned tick (Haemaphysalis longicornis) in several U.S. states since its discovery in 2017, according to today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“The full public health and agricultural impact of this tick discovery and spread is unknown,” said Ben Beard, Ph.D., deputy director of CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases.  “In other parts of the world, the Asian longhorned tick can transmit many types of pathogens common in the United States. We are concerned that this tick, which can cause massive infestations on animals, on people, and in the environment, is spreading in the United States.”

New Jersey and eight other states report finding this tick

New Jersey was the first state to report the tick on a sheep in August 2017. Since then, 45 counties or county equivalents in New Jersey and eight other states—Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia—have reported finding the tick on a variety of hosts, including people, wildlife, domestic animals, and in environmental samples.

In contrast to most tick species, a single female tick can reproduce offspring (1-2,000 eggs at a time) without mating. As a result, hundreds to thousands of ticks can be found on a single animal, person, or in the environment. Livestock producers and pet owners should work with their veterinarians to maintain regular tick prevention and report any unknown tick species to their local department of agriculture.

In other parts of the world where the Asian longhorned tick is common, it is a serious threat to livestock. In some regions of New Zealand and Australia, this tick can reduce production in dairy cattle by 25 percent.

CDC and its partners work to learn more, prevent spread of disease

To better understand the full potential impact of this tick discovery in the United States, CDC is working with a network of federal, state, and local experts representing veterinary and agricultural science and public health to:

  • Determine the geographic distribution of Asian longhorned tick in the United States.
  • Determine the kinds of pathogens carried by Asian longhorned ticks in affected states that could infect people. Pathogens found in these ticks in other parts of the world, also endemic to the United States, include Borrelia, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Rickettsia, and Babesia.
  • Determine what new laboratory tests are needed to detect pathogens that could be introduced or spread by these ticks in the United States.
  • Establish a clean colony (ticks with no pathogens) for studies.
  • Determine how frequently the Asian longhorned tick bites people and animals in the United States.
  • Determine effective prevention and control strategies.

Eventually operating under a national strategy, this network of collaborators will work to limit the spread of tickborne diseases before they affect people and animals. This concerted, sustained national effort is needed to address the threat posed by the Asian longhorned tick, as well as the threat posed by the ongoing increase in vector-borne diseases in the United States.

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Protect against tickborne diseases

Everyone can take steps to prevent tick bites:

  • Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellents containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), para-menthane-diol (PMD), or 2-undecanone. Always follow product instructions.
  • Treat clothing and gear with products containing 0.5 percent permethrin. Permethrin can be used to treat boots, clothing, and camping gear and remain protective through several washings. Alternatively, you can buy permethrin-treated clothing and gear.
  • Check your body and clothing for ticks upon return from potentially tick-infested areas, including your own backyard. Use a hand-held or full-length mirror to view all parts of your body. Place tick-infested clothes in a dryer on high heat for at least 10 minutes to kill ticks on dry clothing after you come indoors.
  • Shower soon after being outdoors. Showering within two hours of coming indoors has been shown to reduce your risk of getting Lyme disease and may be effective in reducing the risk of other tickborne diseases. Showering may help wash off unattached ticks and is a good time to do a tick check.
  • Talk to your veterinarian about tickborne diseases in your area and prevention products for your dog.

For more information:

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Petersen L, Beard CB, Visser S. November 2018. Combatting the Increasing Threat of Vector-Borne Disease in the United States with a National Vector-Borne Disease Prevention and Control System. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

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Conservation Disease New Publications Research

Researchers discover how ‘cryptic’ connections in disease transmission influence epidemics

From VT News
NOVEMBER 19

Diseases have repeatedly spilled over from wildlife to humans, causing local to global epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and Nipah.

A new study by researchers of disease transmission in bats has broad implications for understanding hidden or “cryptic” connections that can spread diseases between species and lead to large-scale outbreaks.

By dusting bats with a fluorescent powder that glows under ultraviolet light, Virginia Tech researchers Joseph Hoyt and Kate Langwig were able to trace the dynamics of disease transmission in bat species that have been devastated by white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has killed 6.7 million bats in North America since 2006.

Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

“These results uncovered and quantified connections, both within and among species, that we never knew about before,” said first author Joseph Hoyt, who led the study as a UC Santa Cruz graduate student and completed the analyses at Virginia Tech as a research scientist in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science.

“We had been seeing explosive epidemics where an entire bat population would become infected with white-nose syndrome within a month or two, and it was a mystery as to how that was happening. We are now able to more accurately explain and track the spread of white-nose syndrome, and our study has strong implications for predicting other epidemics,” Hoyt said.

When we think about who we might get sick from, we tend to think of our social groups: family, friends, and co-workers. But, we forget about that brief interaction with an employee at the DMV, a barista at a coffee shop, or shared airspace on public transportation. People are aware of these interactions, but not how important they are to the spread of epidemics. In the past, these types of hidden interactions have been poorly understood because they are so difficult to quantify.

Second author on the study, Kate Langwig, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech, said this study shows that infrequent and indirect connections, also called “cryptic” connections, among individuals play a far larger role in the transmission of disease than was previously understood.

“Cryptic connections are essentially pathways or connections between individuals that we wouldn’t normally be able to estimate or observe. They have largely been ignored by researchers in the past, but this study quantifies their importance. Our study creates an integrated model of social group connections and cryptic connections,” said Langwig, an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center, an arm of the Fralin Life Science Institute.

Coauthor A. Marm Kilpatrick, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, noted that spillover events, when pathogens spread from wild animals to human populations, tend to occur through these kinds of cryptic connections. “We don’t normally appreciate how important they are except retrospectively, when we investigate outbreaks of diseases like Ebola or SARS,” he said.

“Our study has compelling implications that will allow researchers to track seemingly random or indirect connections in wildlife that may spill over to human populations,” said Langwig.

The fluorescent dust used in this study proved to be highly effective at revealing cryptic connections among the bats. The researchers conducted the study at eight hibernation sites, mostly abandoned mine tunnels, in the upper Midwest. Each site had as many as four species of bats using it. At the start of the study, the pathogen causing white-nose syndrome had not yet reached these populations.

The researchers first surveyed the bats and characterized their social networks, measuring direct physical contacts among bats hibernating together in groups, as well as additional connections made by bats moving between groups. Then, they applied the fluorescent dust to several bats in early winter, using a different color for each individual bat. In late winter, the researchers returned to see where each color of fluorescent dust ended up.

“We amassed huge data sets for every single bat in each population. We characterized the bats’ social groups, and also used the fluorescent dust to track their movements and contacts,” said Langwig.

The researchers found that “the spread of the dust mirrors how the fungal pathogen spreads, so we can see if a bat deposits dust somewhere in the environment and another bat passes through and picks it up. It also reveals infrequent direct contacts that we would not normally observe,” said Hoyt.

The fungal pathogen that causes white-nose syndrome arrived in the area after the fluorescent dust studies were conducted, and the researchers also tracked its spread at each site. They found that the actual transmission dynamics of the disease were better explained by the sum of all the connections revealed in the dust studies than by just using the hibernation social groups.

“We were able to explain the actual invasion of the pathogen much better by including those cryptic connections, and they were even more important for explaining transmission between species than for transmission within species,” Hoyt said.

Bats roosting
Image left: Northern long-eared bat roosting solitarily during hibernation. Image right: Little brown bat covered in UVF dust roosting in a group with other little brown bats. Images courtesy Joe Hoyt and Kate Langwig.

One of the puzzling features of white-nose syndrome is its ability to spread through a community of bats during the winter, when the animals are hibernating 99.5 percent of the time. They rouse from hibernation only very briefly every two to three weeks. Yet the dust studies showed that they move around enough to have many more connections than can be observed in their hibernation groups.

Most striking were the cryptic connections revealed for one species, the northern long-eared bat, which roosts by itself, not in groups. Although classical theory would predict low infection rates for this solitary species, it has been hard hit by white-nose syndrome.

“When we put fluorescent dust on the northern long-eared bat, it would show up on other species that we had never seen them interact with. We would never have predicted that the infection could spread by that route,” Hoyt said.

The researchers discovered that a different solitary species, the tri-colored bat, has a lower infection rate and showed less evidence of cryptic connections with other bats, but did transfer dust to surfaces in the sites where it roosts. “We found that the tri-colored bat is much more spatially segregated. It’s not that it doesn’t rouse and crawl around, it just does so in a range that has less overlap with other bats — it appears to be more territorial in its use of space,” Hoyt said.

Unfortunately for bats, the spores of the fungal pathogen that causes white-nose syndrome stay in the environment and remain infectious for years. Once the walls and ceiling of a cave have been contaminated with the spores, bats using the site for hibernation will be exposed to infections year after year.

White-nose syndrome is considered one of the worst wildlife diseases in modern times, having killed millions of bats across North America.

But white-nose syndrome does not appear to pose a risk to human health. It is caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, which grows optimally at low temperatures. The United States Geological Survey said, “Thousands of people have visited affected caves and mines since white-nose syndrome was first observed, and there have been no reported human illnesses attributable to white-nose syndrome. We are still learning about the disease, but we know of no risk to humans from contact with white nose-affected bats.”

The Virginia Tech and UC Santa Cruz researchers are part of a coordinated response to white-nose syndrome involving state and federal agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations.

In addition to Hoyt, Langwig, and Kilpatrick, the coauthors of the paper include Paul White, Heather Kaarakka, and Jennifer Redell at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Allen Kurta at Eastern Michigan University; John DePue and William Scullon at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources; Katy Parise and Jeffrey Foster at the University of New Hampshire; and Winifred Frick at Bat Conservation International and UC Santa Cruz. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bat Conservation International.

Hoyt and Langwig were hired as part of the Global Systems Science Destination Area in the College of Science at Virginia Tech to address issues of infectious disease. The Global Systems Science Destination Area is focused on understanding and finding solutions to critical problems associated with human activity and environmental change, that, together affect diseases states, water quality, and food production.

Written by Kristin Rose and Tim Stephens

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614
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Categories
Climate Change Disease Drinking water New Publications

Surface water and flood dynamics increase vulnerability to waterborne disease and climate change

From VT News
NOVEMBER 8

Diarrheal disease, a preventable and treatable illness, remains the second-leading cause of death in children under the age of 5 and a persistent public health threat in sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers have now uncovered how surface water dynamics may increase the vulnerability of dependent populations to diarrheal disease and climate change.

Kathleen Alexander, professor of wildlife in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment, in collaboration with Alexandra Heaney and Jeffrey Shaman, both of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has been conducting research on the influence of flood pulse dynamics on diarrheal disease along the Chobe River flood plain system in northern Botswana.

The results of their study, funded by the National Science Foundation, were published in PLOS Medicine.

Alexander’s research is focused on communities reliant on surface water in the Chobe River flood plain system. This river system, like others in Africa, experiences annual floods that are highly variable, both seasonally and from year to year.

Alexander and her team wanted to know if surface water dynamics were contributing to diarrheal disease outbreaks and how climate change, predicted to increase flooding and hydrological variability, might increase the vulnerability of local human populations to diarrheal disease.

Despite the presence of centralized water treatment infrastructure, outbreaks of diarrheal disease continue to occur in a quasi-regular pattern in the region.

“It was a fundamental question for me,” Alexander said. “These places are doing everything right, but local populations are still impacted by diarrheal disease. Why does the infrastructure fail to protect these communities, and what can we do to improve public health now and under future environmental conditions?”

In partnership with the government of Botswana, the researchers evaluated outbreak patterns across eight villages and towns along the Chobe River, utilizing decades of data from 10 government health facilities. They evaluated these data in conjunction with detailed hydrometeorological conditions, including bimonthly water quality studies that spanned nearly a decade.

They discovered that increases in diarrheal disease cases were closely tied to periods of rainfall, flood recession, and changes in surface water quality, with a 1 meter drop in river height in the dry season associated with a staggering 16.7 percent increase in diarrheal disease in children under 5.

A significant finding was that various age groups were affected differently by season, with children aged 1 to 4 experiencing more illnesses in the wet season with rainfall events, whereas older children and adults reported more diarrhea in the dry season during periods of flood recession. Diarrhea type also varied significantly by season.

“What this tells us is that environmental conditions drive diarrheal disease — not just the number of diarrhea cases and timing of outbreaks but also who is affected and what type of diarrhea might occur,” said Alexander, who is also affiliated with Virginia Tech’s Fralin Life Science Institute.

Adults and children were equally affected, suggesting that in high HIV burden populations such as those in northern Botswana, an expansion of diarrheal disease surveillance and intervention strategies may be needed to engage other at-risk sectors of the population beyond the under-5 age class.

While flooding of a region is often associated with disease outbreaks in other systems, it was the draining of water from the flood plains that was most closely tied to diarrheal disease and degraded water quality in this study.

“This research shows the complex relationships among people, wildlife, and the water cycle in regions with pronounced wet and dry seasons,” said Richard Yuretich, a director of the National Science Foundation’s Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems program, which funded the research. “The pattern of disease associated with changes in the volume and quality of water can help in designing water-treatment systems that are responsive to the natural ebb and flow of the environment.”

The researchers hypothesize that extreme variability in surface water conditions associated with annual rainfall and flood dynamics may compromise water treatment facilities that require removal of sediments and solids to be effective.

“These highly variable surface water dynamics are difficult to manage in many water treatment plants, potentially increasing waterborne disease risk in dependent populations,” Alexander said.

In southern Africa, climate change is predicted to intensify hydrological variability and the frequency of extreme events, such as drought and floods, suggesting that dependent populations will be more vulnerable to waterborne disease.

“There is an urgent need to evaluate water infrastructure and ensure these systems are able to handle rapid shifts in surface water quality,” Alexander said.

Alexander emphasized that the complex dynamics influencing diarrheal disease underscore the need for inclusion of research dimensions not usually considered in the field of public health.

“A single scale of study is often inadequate to understanding today’s complex problems,” she noted. “Public health research must look beyond the patient, engaging multiscale and multidisciplinary approaches that span the human-environmental interface.”

Alexander, a wildlife veterinarian, disease ecologist, and co-founder of the Center for Conservation of African Resources: Animals, Communities, and Land Use (CARACAL) in Botswana, directs her research program at exploring and understanding the factors that influence the emergence and persistence of novel and re-emerging diseases at the human-wildlife-environment interface.

Funding for this study was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems program, with additional support contributed through the Empowerment of Non State Actors Programme, a joint partnership between the government of Botswana and the European Union. This paper is part of the PLOS Medicine Special Issue: Climate Change and Health.

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CONTACT
Krista Timney
540-231-6157

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Categories
Disease News Research

Virginia Tech researchers host international meeting on mange in wildlife

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News

Cases of mange in animals are on the rise worldwide, and a team of Virginia Tech researchers is spearheading a local and international effort to coordinate the research among a global network of experts studying mange in wildlife.

The International Meeting on Sarcoptic Mange in Wildlife was held at Virginia Tech on June 4 and 5, 2018, hosted by the College of Natural Resources and Environment. The intensive two-day workshop brought together scientists and wildlife managers spanning four continents and varied backgrounds in order to provide a wide-ranging assessment of the latest developments and research of mange disease in wildlife.

Participants also identified and prioritized the primary gaps in knowledge and research needed to better our understanding of the pervasive Sarcoptes scabiei mite and the diseases it causes among wildlife, domesticated animals, and humans. A report of the meeting and findings was recently published in the journal Parasites and Vectors.

Sarcoptic mange is an infectious disease caused by the burrowing mite, Sarcoptes scabiei. Modern-day infestations have occurred among American black bears, wolves, and foxes in North America; llama livestock and canids in Latin America; wombats in Australia; gazelles, sheep, and endangered, captive red pandas in Asia; and a series of endangered large mammals in Africa.

The parasitic mite is re-emerging in North America, having been used in the early 1900s as an invasive parasite for the biological control of coyotes and wolves prone to preying on ranchers’ livestock. However, invasive parasites often create negative impacts for native flora and fauna, including the potential to spill over to native endangered species.

Increasing knowledge of how invasive parasites, such as the mite Sarcoptes scabiei, spread and affect novel species may help to better understand past epidemics and predict future outbreaks of mange and other infectious diseases of public health importance.

The workshop is part of a larger investigation led by Luis E. Escobar, assistant professor of disease ecology in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. The project conception included Lisa Belden, professor in the College of Science; Anne Zajac, professor of parasitology in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine; and Megan Kirchgessner, a wildlife veterinarian with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Escobar and Belden are both faculty affiliates of Virginia Tech’s Global Change Center, a branch of the Fralin Life Science Institute, which provided the grant for the workshop.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”25017″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]According to Escobar, reports of sarcoptic mange among American black bears in Virginia and neighboring states, such as Maryland and Pennsylvania, have increased significantly over the past several years. The team of Virginia Tech researchers is collaborating with state and regional partners, such as Van Wick and the Wildlife Center of Virginia, to learn how diseases can affect wide populations of wildlife by using sarcoptic mange and black bears as a model.

“If we can understand how changes in habitat can facilitate the spread of diseases, we can apply that knowledge to understand other diseases, like rabies, which also occurs in wildlife in this region and is much more dangerous for humans, pets, and livestock,” said Escobar, an expert in the field of disease biogeography. “The knowledge we plan to develop with mange in North America can also be applied to other diseases affecting wildlife around the world.”

Sarcoptic mange is a highly contagious disease that spreads between mammals via physical contact or through a contaminated environment, like burrows or nests. Domestic animals, wildlife, and humans can all be infested with the S. scabiei mite, which is termed mange in animals and scabies in humans. While various lineages of the mite display preference and the ability to flourish on specialized hosts, cases have shown that the mite can transfer across species, such as between predator and prey or between wildlife and domestic pets.

In mammals, signs of sarcoptic mange often include hair loss and a thickening and wrinkling of the skin. In addition to challenges for maintaining body temperature due to loss of fur, persistent irritation and scratching can cause lesions and lead to secondary infection. The most severe infestations may result in emaciation, lethargy, hypothermia, and death of the animal.

Through this preliminary research, Escobar seeks to understand why the mite finds some areas and hosts suitable now, where it did not before, such as the case for black bears in Appalachia. The Virginia Tech team of researchers is working toward future publications and the generation of preliminary data to develop a National Science Foundation grant proposal to expand their efforts to untangle the factors that better explain why diseases affect some regions and species but not others.

“From this meeting, we made a strong international network of collaborators,” said Escobar. “Most importantly, we’ve identified gaps in our knowledge of how Sarcoptic scabiei is affecting animal populations across the globe, setting a benchmark for research priorities for mange in wildlife over the next decade.”

The International Meeting on Sarcoptic Mange in Wildlife workshop was funded by a Seed Grant of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and supported by the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Disease Educational Outreach News Science Communication

Visit the Smithsonian’s new infectious disease exhibit and find a Hokie alumna making science accessible

From VT News

Why should people and animals be vaccinated? How does disease spread between animals and people? How does an outbreak become a pandemic? What can we do to prevent the spread of viruses, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and influenza?

Answers to these questions can now be found in the same space where dinosaurs tower and whale moans bellow. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., opened its doors on May 18, 2018, to reveal a new line of viral defense: knowledge of how disease spreads, where disease fits within the larger picture of the environment, and our place in it.

The exhibit, called Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World, is designed to teach visitors how zoonotic diseases, or those typically infecting animals that spill over to humans, spread to become a global threat.

Outbreak features nine diseases that have spilled over from animals, including bats and rodents. Two of the diseases featured, Ebola and Nipah, have outbreaks that are occurring right now. The exhibit examines what we can do to stop these disease outbreaks from becoming pandemics. But understanding our individual role in stopping a disease outbreak can be difficult.

Exhibits Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Photo credit: James Di Loreto, Lucia RM Martino & Fred Cochard, Smithsonian.

This is where Ashley Peery comes in. Peery, now a two-time alumna at Virginia Tech, spent the last six months developing materials to train volunteers for the exhibit. For six weeks from April through May, she led the training of 66 volunteers who live around the nation’s capital. The volunteers vary in age and expertise and include scientists, doctors, teachers, and science enthusiasts from the undergraduate level all the way up to retired professional.

“I find that the people recruited to volunteer in Outbreak are genuinely interested in learning how to share their knowledge with others,” said Peery,  an American Society for Microbiology (ASM) fellow who is detailed to the Smithsonian as an educator.

Leading up to the exhibit’s opening, Peery was also responsible for developing activities and strategies that volunteers could use to help museum visitors connect with the exhibit’s messages about One Health, the idea that human health, animal health, and environmental health are all interconnected.

To develop the material, Peery pooled together resources based on her own expertise. At Virginia Tech, Peery first studied biology in the College of Science as an undergraduate, then as a doctoral student in entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. For her Ph.D., Peery studied genetic changes in Anopheles mosquitoes, which can carry malaria, under the guidance of Igor Sharakhov, an associate professor of entomology and an expert in genomics and cytogenetics of mosquitoes.

Peery also utilized the latest science and expertise from scientists working at the cutting edge of these fields. She drew material from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as from ASM’s network of experts. She created models that allow volunteers to engage visitors with specific examples of the roles of scientists and the public in the process, for example. Visitors are then asked how they would approach disease based on whether they wore the hat of an epidemiologist, a disease researcher, or a citizen concerned with infection.

The exhibit features nine zoonotic viruses: HIV/AIDS, influenza (both bird and human strains), hantavirus, Nipah, SARS, MERS, Ebola, and Zika. Each of these viruses tells a story of One Health and visitors learn the human, animal, and environmental components of each one. The exhibit also highlights an “upside” for each of the diseases.

Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World Exhibit
Ashley Peery training volunteers to lead tours of the Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World Exhibit. Photo courtesy of Ashley Peery.

“The One Health framework helps us understand how each featured disease has spilled over to humans, and shows how human actions can spread these diseases into outbreaks and even pandemics,” Peery said.

Factors that affect the spread of these viruses include habitat destruction, growing global populations, and domestication of animals, all of which the exhibit aims to explain.

“One Health is a holistic approach for thinking about disease,” Peery said.

The One Health perspective has been gaining traction over the past 10 years, Peery explained, but the concept has struggled to reach scientists working across the human, animal, and environmental  forefronts of disease research. The exhibit will help bring this mode of thinking to light, Peery said.

The training course for Outbreak volunteers included online modules and face-to-face sessions. This in-person portion included talks by One Health experts from the CDC, USAID, ASM, and the National Zoo. It also included training in strategies for science communication and inquiry-based learning approaches.

The Smithsonian has well-developed methods for teaching volunteers, Peery explained. New volunteers are trained to consider their audience, speak without jargon, and use inquiry-based learning approaches as they interact with visitors. Outbreak volunteers take the role of a learning guide and use 3D models and guiding questions to assist visitors as they learn. In this approach, volunteers encourage visitors to take an active role in their own learning rather than simply providing answers.

“How do you leverage the information in the exhibit to reach specific learning outcomes so visitors walk away understanding the exhibit?” Peery asked, while developing the training materials in February 2018. “One goal of training is to equip Outbreak volunteers  with a ‘bag of tricks,’ such as objects or ideas that visitors can relate to. This will help  pull people in who are interested and build upon this connection so these folks leave with some deeper understanding of the exhibit.”

Peery will recruit and train new volunteers in early 2019 for those interested in joining the museum as volunteers.

In the future, Peery will also be working to promote DIY Outbreak, a print on demand version of the exhibit. DIY Outbreak is a 15-panel condensed version of the 4,400 square feet of panels, objects, and videos on view in the main exhibit. DIY Outbreak is available in other languages in addition to English—French, Spanish, Arabic, and traditional and simplified Chinese. It will serve as a flexible learning resource  for people “who need a tool to educate their local community,” Peery said.

”My hope is that these very important messages of how diseases spread from animals to humans will reach communities around the world, not just those that are able to walk through the doors of the museum in Washington, D.C., and DIY Outbreak is really going to help with that,” Peery said.

This goal is fitting for Peery, who has continued to grow an interest in science outreach since her time at Virginia Tech.

When asked how Peery interacts with visitors who are skeptics, she noted, “You’re not going to change people’s minds, but we can reference the latest scientific data and meet them where they are. It’s really key that we meet the community where they are.”

The exhibit will run until May 2021 and is open year-round.

-Written by Cassandra Hockman

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